My K-5 school just did a One School, One Book program this year for the first time. We ended up using the book A Cricket in Times Square by George Seldon and loved it. (We decided to go with a classic because we wanted to be really sure no parents would complain about the subject matter the first year.--We figure once the program is more established we can move into books with touchier topics if we want. We figured if anyone complained we could just say, "It's a classic." I also had received the advice to do a story about animals because parents will tolerate a lot more problems in animals' lives than they might in reading about children's lives.)
The kindergarten teachers found it worked well for their students, but it also was complex enough for the 5th graders. It also was great because our music teacher got really excited about how central music is in the story and ended up doing a lot of activities that related to the book. The one less than perfect piece about the book was that there is a Chinese character in the book whose words are written in dialect. He's a positive character, and is portrayed as having a lot of knowledge, so different people could have different opinions about whether the image of this character is stereotypical. I had a great discussion with my 4th and 5th graders about whether they would consider it a stereotype, and appreciated the opportunity to have that kind of discussion. I wrote up suggestions of discussion questions and activities for families to talk about/do together. If anyone is interested in seeing them feel free to e-mail me directly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). We also considered using The Trumpet of the Swan. Natasha _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
